In recent years, orchards, home owners, and other cultivators of plants have strived to conserve water. Modern orchard sprinkling devices conserve water by using a separate water sprinkler or other outlet spraying upward directly under the canopy of each tree, rather than using fewer outlets, each spraying from above the canopies of several trees. Use of individual sprinklers for each tree has reduced water consumption by ninety percent.
Unfortunately, crawling insects, small snails, and the like are attracted to the water coming from the individual sprinkler heads, particularly as the individual sprinkler heads are located close to the ground and commonly wet the stakes or other apparatus supporting them. The insects and snails gather in great numbers around the emitter of the sprinkler head and ultimately clog the sprinkler, blocking the flow of water so that it ceases to function.
Prior attempts to prevent insects and other pests from gaining access to protected structures have commonly relied on chemicals or traps which can be lost, used up, filled, washed out by sprinkler water, or otherwise easily become ineffective.